Monthly Archives: May 2016

Our Feldenkrais Fridays are always a delight. Always with some element of surprise. Always joyful.

It’s movement…but not as we know it. It’s movement…and today it was all about rocking and rolling.

Lesson 1 was rocking

Lesson 2 twisting

Lesson3 rolling

We started each of the lessons standing, just checking, just noticing as we shifted our weight. So far, so much in common with the start of a yoga session or Zhan Zhuang. Then we do things differently in an Awareness Through Movement workshop.

The differences become clear as Veronica tells us that the key to Feldenkrais is awareness. The movement is what we do to help awareness. The movement is the means by which we focus our attention. However what we are doing doesn’t require movement. It requires attention. Which leads to awareness.

If, like me, you’ve some aches and pains, this is music to our ears, salve to our wounds. We can make very small movements and that’s good. We can even just lie there and imagine our body moving and that’s good too. We are even making progress if we simply be: benefits are gained in bringing awareness to our experience. An Awareness Through Movement afternoon at the Life Centre is effectively a kind of meditation. Bringing a kindly awareness to our bodies. However, the surprise and delight is likely to arrive when you start rocking and rolling.

Rocking and rolling is not always a part of a Feldenkrais Friday at the Life Centre. Today it was a very enjoyable and life enhancing way of increasing awareness and enabling our bodies to Move with Ease while our busy minds calmed into a relaxed almost trance like state. Bliss. There can be this bliss at the end of our Feldenkrais Friday. The bliss of feeling centred and relaxed. Whether you think of it as learning about movement with a side order of bliss and joy, or the other way around, or a different blend of beneficial outcomes will vary. Each individual response will be unique, somethings shared, some aspects individual.

This afternoon, we got in touch with our gravitational and energetic centre. Literally. Hand on area front and other hand on sacrum at the back. Moving and noticing shifts that hands can feel. It can be helpful to envisage a golden sphere of light in the area between a spot a couple of inches below the navel and the sacral bones of the pelvis. We used guided movements to develop our awareness of this centre. Through this focused attention we were able to engage this centre more effectively.

This idea may be something you have come across before, in Tai Chi or martial arts. Even so, it can take this kind of focused attention to really feel it, to see it in action, to get it, know the difference that it can make. After an afternoon of rocking and rolling on the floor the benefits become tangible: the body feels the benefits. The body learns that it can move with greater ease.

The reward for attention is always healing. This kind of guided attention increasing awareness and leading to a healing motion is why I do Feldenkrais. How about you? Any movements you’d like to bring to the healing possibilities of an Awareness through Movement afternoon?